How much does siding cost in London Ontario?

The honest answer is that nobody can give you a real number over the phone, and the ones who do are quoting a range wide enough to be useless.

Siding is priced on wall area, not floor area. A 1,600 square foot bungalow and a 1,600 square foot two-storey have very different wall areas, and the two-storey costs more again because of staging and access. The first thing a quote needs is a measurement, and the second is a count of what interrupts that wall.

Corners drive labour more than most homeowners expect. Every outside corner needs a corner post, every inside corner needs channel, and both are slow compared to running field panel. A simple rectangular bungalow and a same-sized house with bays, a bump-out and an L-shaped footprint are not the same job.

Trim and capping are their own line. Window and door capping, frieze board, gable trim, soffit returns and fascia are measured separately from the wall. On an older London home with a lot of window openings, trim can be a substantial share of the total.

Tear-off and disposal are real costs. Removing old cladding, bagging it and paying tipping fees is labour and a bin. On an aluminum tear-off some of that comes back as scrap credit, and that credit should appear on your quote rather than quietly staying with the contractor.

Sheathing repair is the wildcard. Nobody knows the condition of the wall until the old cladding is off. The correct way to handle this is a per-sheet price agreed in advance, so that if the crew finds four bad sheets you already know what four sheets costs. A quote that says nothing about sheathing is a quote that will change.

Storeys change everything. Two-storey and storey-and-a-half homes need scaffold or lift time, and steep or complex rooflines add gable and dormer work that is slow and awkward. This is why two houses with identical wall area can be quoted weeks apart in labour.

Material choice sits on top of all of that. Standard vinyl is the least expensive installed. Insulated vinyl carries a material premium. Engineered wood sits above that, and fibre cement is usually the highest installed cost because the boards are heavy, every cut end needs sealing and the fastening is per board rather than hung.

What you should insist on is a quote where material, labour, trim, capping, tear-off, disposal and any sheathing allowance are separate lines. A single lump-sum number cannot be compared against another contractor's single lump-sum number, and that is usually the point of quoting it that way.

Written by the team at siding contractor in London, Ontario.